Without a Trace

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘If George had courted me when I was at home I might have been only too happy to marry him and live in a police house,’ Molly said, squirming a bit, because she wasn’t really comfortable with Rose thinking she was too good for Robert now. ‘But he didn’t, and even now he isn’t saying he’s always loved me, or anything positive.’

  ‘Forget him. You don’t want some dull policeman in an even duller place. We’ll find ourselves a couple of dream boats at the Empire,’ Rose said with a grin. ‘We need to have a list prepared to tick off: good job, well educated, nice-looking, smart clothes, a car, parents with money.’

  ‘If they’ve got all that, they probably only want a girl for one thing,’ Molly said. ‘We aren’t that much of a catch, working at Bourne & Hollingsworth.’

  ‘Speak for yourself.’ Rose grinned. ‘And I might be prepared to go the whole way if the man was worth it.’

  Molly laughed, because she didn’t believe Rose would ever go that far before marriage. Like most of the young staff here, she wanted fun, but of the innocent kind: going out to tea, the cinema or the theatre with a man, but nothing more. Molly had been told about a girl who’d been asked to leave back in the spring when it was discovered she was pregnant. The disdain and lack of sympathy for her expressed by many different girls was quite disturbing really, for surely some of them must have had moments with some boy, as she had with Andy, when she had almost succumbed.

  In fact, Molly felt that if she ever felt that way again with a man who she knew loved her and who she could trust, she doubted she’d hold back. Besides, there were several girls back in Sawbridge who were pregnant on their wedding day, and their marriages were all happy ones.

  Then, of course, there were Cassie’s views on the subject. She made no secret of liking sex and, often, when Molly had been listening to her speaking about her relationships with men, she’d felt Cassie was the most honourable, truthful person she’d ever met.

  In one of Cassie’s poems she’d spoken of hypocrisy. ‘I am shamed by those who speak out with others’ voices, knowing that it is not their truth.’

  She certainly didn’t think Cassie would’ve approved of anyone searching out a man using a cold-hearted list of required assets. She would’ve said that kindness, passion, loyalty and honour were more important.

  But maybe Rose and other girls that said similar things were just showing off, trying to make themselves sound more sophisticated.

  Dilys was fascinated by Soho – the strip clubs, jazz dives, gambling places and the spivs and floozies who worked there. One evening about six weeks after Molly had started at Bourne & Hollingsworth, she persuaded Molly it was time they went to a jazz club.

  ‘How can we not do it?’ she said. ‘Soho is right on our doorstep. Imagine how we’ll feel when we are old if we hadn’t dared to try it out?’

  Molly liked the idea in theory, but there were always memos being posted up in the staff room about the dangers of Soho, advising staff to keep away.

  ‘Okay, then,’ Molly agreed, not wanting to seem dull and unadventurous. ‘If we go on Saturday we can be out till twelve.’

  Both girls wore new dresses for their adventure. Dilys was in turquoise shantung, a princess-style dress with a stand-up collar that framed her face, and a flared skirt which they thought looked very sophisticated. Molly wore a cream crêpe sheath dress with three-quarter-length sleeves and a sweetheart neckline, the most daring, slinky dress she’d ever worn. Even though it was a bit chilly they decided against wearing a coat or cardigan, as they wanted to show off their dresses.

  They went to a pub first for a couple of Babychams to give them some courage, and at nine they sauntered off to find the Blue Moon Club just off Wardour Street.

  It was a bit disappointing to find they were too early. The emptiness of the basement club made the grimy walls, sticky floor and the smell of stale drink and cigarettes more noticeable. It was also very dark, just a few dim lights here and there on the walls and candles on the tables. A jazz quartet was playing, and a waitress in a very short black satin dress like a skater’s outfit plonked two glasses of red wine down in front of them and said, ‘They’re on the house,’ in a very surly way.

  The wine was horrible, but they sipped it anyway, and when Dilys looked around two men at the closest table to them grinned and raised their glasses in a toast.

  ‘They’re old enough to be our dads,’ Molly said in horror.

  Although both men were smartly dressed in dark suits, they had thinning hair and the slack jowls of men over fifty who drank too much.

  ‘As long as they buy us a few drinks, does it matter how old they are?’ Dilys said. ‘We’re here in a Soho night club at last! We don’t have to marry them.’

  Molly liked jazz – sometimes they had a jazz band playing at the Pied Horse – but the band here was much better, and when a girl singer came on after a couple of numbers to sing ‘Frankie and Johnny’ it got even better.

  At the same time, the two men came over to the girls’ table. ‘That red wine they give girls in here is terrible. Let us get you a drink you like?’

  ‘Well, thank you,’ Dilys simpered. ‘It is awful, and we’d love a Babycham.’

  The taller of the two men introduced himself as Mike, waved his hand at the waitress and gave her the order, Babychams for the girls and whisky for them.

  ‘This is my pal Ernie,’ he said of his companion. ‘We’re down in the Smoke on a business trip and so I’m sure you won’t mind if we keep you company.’

  It wasn’t a question, more an ultimatum, and both men sat down before either girl could respond. ‘So,’ Mike said, grinning at Molly. ‘What are your names, and where do two such pretty girls come from?’

  Close up, the two men looked even more worn and saggy; they had bad teeth, paunches and nicotine-stained fingers. From their accents, they sounded like they came from Birmingham, and Molly felt a little threatened.

  ‘I’m Molly, from Somerset, and Dilys is from Cardiff,’ she said. ‘We are both nurses at the Middlesex Hospital. I’m a midwife and Dilys is a sister on the children’s ward.’

  Dilys bit her lip so as not to laugh. They had said on the way here they would make up a different job and place to live as they didn’t want anyone tracking them down to Bourne & Hollingsworth.

  ‘We like nurses,’ Ernie said, and when he smiled his brown teeth were even worse than the girls had first thought. ‘Do you live in a flat outside the hospital?’

  ‘That would be telling,’ Dilys said with a very naughty grin. ‘Never tell a gentleman where you live, that’s what my granny told me when I came to London.’

  The drinks arrived just as the club started to get busier. The girls downed their Babychams quickly and, almost immediately, a second round arrived. The men had moved their chairs closer to the girls and Mike kept trying to take Molly’s hand. All she wanted to do was listen to the great music and perhaps have a couple of dances, but it looked like they were stuck now with these two old men, and all the other tables had filled up, so even if they’d felt able to move there was nowhere to move to.

  Molly drank the second glass of Babycham and felt a little squiffy. The music was too loud to really make conversation, and she could see Dilys was uncomfortable with Ernie, too.

  But the club was exciting, lots of very elegant women in beautiful evening dresses, their hair just perfect, and the men all looked so suave and sophisticated. But there was an undercurrent of something odd. She noticed that there were other girls who came in without male partners, but they weren’t alone for very long; a man would always join them. Molly could tell just by watching that they didn’t know the girls.

  By her third Babycham, Molly knew she was drunk, and she could see that Dilys was, too. Mike and Ernie took them to the dance floor for a dance, and Molly didn’t like the tight way Mike was holding her one bit.

  ‘I need to go to the powder room,’ she said to Dilys, giving her a surreptitious wink to make her realize she was to come,
too.

  ‘Get us another drink in, boys,’ Dilys said, giving Ernie what passed for an affectionate tap on the cheek. ‘Won’t be long.’

  ‘We’ve got to get out of here, they’re horrible,’ Molly said once they were in the Ladies. ‘It’s half past eleven anyway, so we’ve got to get back.’

  ‘I’m too drunk to run,’ Dilys said, slurring her words. ‘I hope we don’t get seen by Matron. She takes a dim view of girls drinking.’

  ‘Come on, then,’ Molly said, opening the door a crack to check the two men weren’t watching. She could just see Mike’s head. He appeared to be watching the girl singer. All they had to do was to skirt round the edge of the club, keeping behind other people till they got to the door.

  They bent over to walk to the door, but the ridiculousness of that made them giggle like schoolgirls. After a while, they reached the door that led to the stairs up to the street.

  Just as they got to street level Mike shouted from the bottom of the stairs. ‘Wait up, girls!’ he yelled. ‘We’ll take you home in a taxi.’

  ‘Run for it,’ Molly ordered. She took Dilys’s hand and they tottered along as fast as their high heels and drunkenness would allow.

  It was only after they’d turned two corners and there was no sight of the men pursuing them that they slowed down.

  ‘I’ve got a stitch,’ Dilys said, bending over to get rid of it. ‘My God, we can pick men, can’t we? What a handsome pair they were!’

  They laughed all the way back to the hostel. ‘At least it was a cheap night,’ Molly said, after they had got into their room, without being seen by Matron. ‘Apart from the drinks in the pub, we didn’t spend anything. But I think the girls on their own in that place are – you know.’

  ‘What?’ Dilys asked.

  ‘Well, street girls,’ Molly said, explaining that she’d seen girls come in alone and then a man would approach them.

  ‘So maybe next time we try out some dive we need some nice male company,’ Dilys giggled. ‘I wonder how much Mike and Ernie would have been prepared to pay us?’

  ‘They could offer me a thousand pounds and I’d turn it down,’ Molly said. ‘Did you see Mike’s teeth?’

  ‘I don’t think he’d be using his teeth,’ Dilys said. They were still giggling after they turned out the light.

  That night in Soho and the awful Mike and Ernie was something the girls often reminded each other of and laughed about, but there were many more memorable evenings, dancing at the Empire, at safer jazz clubs and in pubs. They learned that the girls they saw that night were club hostesses who got a fee for keeping men company. Mike and Ernie must have thought that’s what they were.

  Dilys didn’t quite fill the hole that Cassie had left in Molly’s life, but in many ways she was an even more agreeable friend because they had no secrets from one another, they shared clothes, looked after one another and really liked being together.

  Molly had been down to Whitechapel several more times, going to see Constance for tea and a chat, then asking questions around the neighbourhood, but although many people remembered Cassie and Petal, they couldn’t throw any light on Cassie’s past. It seemed almost unbelievable that anyone could become so embroiled in so many people’s lives without giving anything of herself away.

  Through reading the journal again and again Molly was certain Cassie had either come from, or had long holidays on, the coast in East Sussex. Her plan was to go there, but as the weeks passed and the store gradually grew busier, with people buying winter clothes and looking ahead to Christmas, she knew she wouldn’t be able to do it till the new year.

  It was frustrating and disappointing that she couldn’t find out anything new about Cassie and so was no nearer in discovering what had happened to Petal, but at least everything was fine at home in Sawbridge.

  Her mother wrote every week, and she said that Jack had become easier to live with since Molly had left. She said he was doing more in the shop; he’d even painted the walls and got smart new linoleum tiles laid. One time when Molly telephoned her she said she thought Jack had always been jealous of Molly and Emily because they took her attention away from him. That was why he was happier now.

  George also wrote often, telling her not only the village gossip but echoing her mother’s words in saying Jack was much less grumpy, sometimes even jovial. He also said her mother was looking more relaxed and was getting out some afternoons to go to Mothers’ Union meetings and to visit her old friends. He always said he missed Molly and wished she’d come back for a weekend, and reminded her she could stay at his house.

  Dilys said it was obvious he was in love with her, but Molly thought she was being silly, as surely a man told the woman if he loved her. But, sometimes, late at night when she couldn’t sleep, Molly would think of George and his kisses, and wonder if she should say something in her letters back to encourage him.

  But she didn’t want him to think she was homesick and only latching on to him because of it. Besides, with her in London and him back in Somerset, it was never going to work out anyway.

  One night halfway through November, Dilys and Molly were just getting ready for bed, when Dilys suddenly blurted out that she had to warn Molly about someone.

  Molly’s three-month probationary period was up now, and she’d been moved from Haberdashery to Gloves a while ago. With autumn well under way, the department was a very busy one.

  ‘Who?’ Molly asked, and giggled. ‘Is it Stan in the stores? He does keep leering at me.’

  ‘No, he’s harmless,’ Dilys replied. ‘It’s Miss Stow. She can be a real vixen.’

  Ruth Stow was the senior assistant in the Glove Department. She was a plain woman from Shropshire, in her mid-thirties. She’d worked at Bourne & Hollingsworth since she was seventeen, and she was always snooty towards the younger girls.

  ‘Have I put a pair of gloves back in the wrong drawer?’ Molly asked, grinning, because Miss Stow was always complaining about assistants who did this.

  ‘No, that’s your trouble: you don’t. She thinks you’re after her job.’

  Molly pulled back the covers on her bed and climbed in. ‘That’s daft. All I want is to be moved to the fashion floor before long. What on earth gave her that idea?’

  ‘You’ve had a lot of praise from customers, I think,’ Dilys said. ‘Miss Stow knows her stuff, but she’s starchy. People like a bit of warmth and someone who takes a real interest in them.’

  Molly frowned. She couldn’t see what could have upset the older woman. She’d tried to be friendly with her, not just behind the counter but talking to her here in the hostel. But her manner was always chilly and Molly had got the idea it was because she was the senior assistant and felt unable to mix with anyone more junior.

  ‘It’s not just in the shop,’ Dilys said. ‘You’ve become popular with most of the other staff, including some of those above us juniors.’

  ‘Me, popular?’ Molly asked.

  Dilys laughed. ‘Yes, very. Surely you’ve noticed that the girls always include you in anything going on and want to share a table with you at mealtimes. And I’ve heard some of the men are sweet on you, especially Tony in Menswear.’

  Molly laughed. She was aware that Tony with the buck teeth was always gazing at her, but she hadn’t considered that people asking to share her table was a sign of popularity; she thought it was just because there was nowhere else for them to sit. ‘I have always attracted male lame dogs,’ she said. ‘Tony is good company, and he’s sweet, but not my type. But, tell me, what should I do about Ruth? Should I try and talk to her about it?’

  ‘I think that might just put her back up even more,’ Dilys said. ‘Just carry on normally and take no notice of her. Chances are she’ll decide all on her own that you’re no threat to her.’

  ‘But who told you this?’ Molly asked.

  Dilys hesitated.

  ‘Come on, tell me,’ Molly urged her. ‘I’m not going to confront whoever it was.’

  ‘Well, it
was Mr Hardcraft,’ Dilys said reluctantly.

  Molly had been merely amused until then but now she realized that Dilys wasn’t just repeating a bit of harmless gossip. Mr Hardcraft was the floor walker, and his job was to look out for any kind of trouble, be it theft or anything else likely to disrupt business.

  ‘He wouldn’t have told you that Miss Stow was gunning for me. My guess is he asked you questions about me. So tell me the whole truth now,’ Molly insisted.

  ‘Well, okay, but don’t fly off the handle. He just asked me stuff like who your friends were and who you saw in the evenings.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ Molly was bewildered.

  ‘I don’t know. I told him when you go out in the evening you’re always with one of us. He asked where you went on your day off, and I said you sometimes go to Whitechapel to see a friend there. Did I do wrong to say that?’

  ‘No, of course not. You aren’t the only one who knows I go to Whitechapel anyway, quite a few of the girls know, so it’s a good job you said it in case he got it from someone else. Do you think Miss Stow’s told him I’m keeping bad company?’ Molly asked. She knew staff could get fired for that.

  ‘Maybe, but if you’re asked you’ve only got to say your friend is in the Church Army – that’s not bad company. But forget about it, Molly. Everyone knows Miss Stow is nasty to anyone who shines too brightly.’

  ‘I’ll try to be especially nice to her in future.’ Molly laughed. ‘Maybe I’ll keep going on about wanting to work in the Fashion Department so she feels less threatened.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  By the week before Christmas, Oxford Street and Regent Street were congested with shoppers from nine in the morning until closing time. Yet even after that, until ten or eleven at night, there were still people thronging the pavements to see the Christmas lights and gaze into the beautiful and brightly lit shop-window displays.